The X-men are back. To be fair they never left. What so many people fail to remember is that just because Disney/Marvel have hated that Fox has had the rights to the X-men, that didn’t stop them from producing X-men titles. Most through these comics by the waste side because they didn’t understand why the “All New All Different” state of the X-men had occurred till a year later when Death of X was finally released. But both Extraordinary X-men and Uncanny X-men managed to tell good stories despite the state of Terrigen poison killing the mutant population because of Disney/Marvel’s “INHUMANS RULE” push. Now we’ve moved on from a war between Inhumans and Mutants, and we begin anew in Central Park of all places and with Kitty Pryde as the new leader of the X-men. Is it a good read? Dear God, please let it be a good read.

The story begins with a broadcast of a woman doing classic mutant hate speech. One of two times in this book mutant hate is randomly included. And it bothers me. Yes, hate is what the mutants are used to. BUT ITS 2017!!! Like for crying out loud. If it was hate for cyclops past actions or they viewed as monsters for fighting the Inhumans I could get behind that. But it’s not. Its classic mutant hate for the sack of classic mutant hate. And its dumb. Moving on. We get the new team of Kitty Pryde, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Rachel Grey under the new name Prestige, and Old Man Logan. Don’t ask me why he isn’t going by Wolverine or something else. He’s just Logan, and it’s starting to get annoying. They face off against Terrax, which is weird for two reasons. A.) as Prestige points out he’s supposed to be dead, and B.) HE’S NOT AN X-MEN VILLIAN. But whatever he’s basically there to provide fodder to the new team to show of heroics so who cares. They defeat him, save a falling building, and they are faced with hate speech. Moving on.

The rest of the issue is honestly very “X-men” to me, but all in a good way. Storm is reflecting on how she royally screwed up and how she tried to leave the team but Kitty wouldn’t let her, but Nightcrawler consoles her saying it’s a new start for everyone, Rachel practices with some of the other mutants in the danger room, and its very apparent that she’s grown a ton since last seeing her in Wolverine and the X-men, even explaining how Kitty thought of her new code name as an evolution. And of course, the comic includes a traditional X-men baseball game which I will always love seeing. Solley because it shows the element of family. Even Kurt and Peter (Nightcrawler and Colossus) joking about using powers. It’s very well done. There’s even a funny bit about how a representative of the New York Mayors office shows up and presents them with an 18-million-dollar bill because they decided to open the new Xavier school in the middle of Central Park. Oh joy.

The story is short but so well done that its almost too expected. When this new Resurrection series was announced that was going to return both the X-men and the Inhumans to their rightful places in the Marvel Universe, they said a lot of the books would be a back to basics type of situation. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but for people who have waited so long for the rebirth and the return of the glory of X-men to Marvel’s front yard, it’s a letdown. So, I will warn you to go in with realistic expectations, but be excited for issue 2 because it seems as if past villains are returning.

The art is very good. The new costumes, for everyone but Old Man Logan’s gritty trench coat wearing self, are a very good return to form. For so long they had worked on modernizing their suits but even Nightcrawler has gone back to the pointed chest piece and Kitty’s suit is basically her old one. But the art here does a very excellent job of showing the emotion and the struggle these mutants are going through and I love it.

Again, it’s hard not to go into this book with high expectations because of all the torment the X-men have gone through because of movie rights that shouldn’t affect comic books. The stories not bad but its average. The only really intriguing parts are the growth that characters have gone through like Storm, Kitty, and Rachel especially. Though the random hate for mutants again that’s justified by “oh they have different genes so let’s hate them” is so odd. Especially nowadays with a million and one metahumans, and Inhumans running around daily. It just seems weird. Hopefully this series goes from average to amazing because right now, it’s what Marvel needs to honestly secure my money.

Rating: 8.5/10

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